On the morning of May 2, 2011, 23 U.S. SEALs and an interpreter assaulted bin Laden's hideout north of Islamabad, shooting and killing bin Laden, two of his bodyguards, one of his sons, and the wife of a bodyguard.

Who fired the shot that killed the world's most-wanted terrorist? It might not be long before all 23 Seals are claiming credit.

In a story published Tuesday by CNN, longtime foreign correspondent and author Peter Bergen takes on Esquire magazine for a story titled "The Shooter" that was published in February. Esquire's story quotes an unidentified SEAL team member who says he shot bin Laden twice in the forehead when he saw him reach for a gun after encountering him in a bedroom.

"The Shooter" tells this riveting tale:

"I thought in that first instant how skinny he was, how tall and how short his beard was, all at once. He was wearing one of those white hats, but he had, like, an almost shaved head. Like a crew cut. I remember all that registering. I was amazed how tall he was, taller than all of us, and it didn't seem like he would be, because all those guys were always smaller than you think.

"I'm just looking at him from right here [he moves his hand out from his face about ten inches]. He's got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he's famous for. And he's moving forward. I don't know if she's got a vest and she's being pushed to martyr them both. He's got a gun within reach. He's a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won't have a chance to clack himself off [blow himself up].

"In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he's going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath."

Bergen, one of the few western journalists who interviewed bin Laden, says he has spoken with a SEAL operator who charges "The Shooter" couldn't be telling the truth because the two guns found in bin Laden's bedroom after his death were found after a search of the room sitting on a high shelf above a door.

Bergen also contends that the Esquire story, suggesting a SEAL team member shot bin Laden in the face, runs counter to instructions the assault team was given just before the raid. The team's members were ordered not to shoot him in the face "unless you have to" because the CIA would need to analyze good pictures of bin Laden's face for facial recognition experts to work effectively.

The Esquire and Bergen stories both come in the wake of another version offered by former SEAL member Mark Owens, a veteran of 13 consecutive combat deployments, who claimed on "60 Minutes" and then in his book "No Easy Day" that his team’s point man shot bin Laden before the team entered his bedroom. Owens said bin Laden was shot again lying on the floor with a grievous head wound.

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

03/22/2013

Canada has a
well-earned reputation as a welcoming country that opens its doors to refugees.

New stats released Thursday by the United Nations, however, suggest that door isn’t being opened as
widely these days.

In 2012, Canada
received 20,500 new asylum seekers, 19 per cent fewer than the previous year.
Canada ranked No. 7 among industrialized nations for receiving refugees,
trailing the likes of Switzerland, France and Sweden.

The U.S., by
contrast, received 83,400 new asylum seekers in 2012, up 10 per cent.

The new UN stats
highlight how effective travel visas can be at thwarting would-be refugees.

In 2009, Canadian
immigration minister Jason Kenney introduced new regulations requiring
travelers from the Czech Republic obtain visas before coming to Canada.

Kenney says Roma
from Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary,
fraudulently come to Canada claiming asylum in order to take advantage of free
health care and low-cost housing here.

During 2008 and
2009, Canada was the 2nd and 3rd highest destination
country for asylum seekers.

“The relatively high
number of Czech asylum applications during this period partly contributed to
Canada’s high ranking,” the U.N. report says. “In the second half of 2009,
Canada introduced visa requirements for Czech citizens. As a result, the number
of asylum seekers from the Czech republic dropped from more than 2,000 in 2009
to almost zero in subsequent years.”

Kenney recently
changed Canada’s immigration laws to make it more difficult for asylum seekers
from Hungary to become refugees. Hungary is on a so-called safe country list,
which means would-be refugees are fast-tracked through the system. Activists
say they stand little chance of success under the new rules.

That may result in a
shakeup in Canada’s 2013 refugee stats. Throughout the world, Afghanistan,
Syria, Serbia and China produced the most asylum seekers last year.

But the picture
looked different in Canada, where Hungary (1,823 cases), China (1,741),
Pakistan (808) and India (765) produced the most asylum seekers in Canada last year. It's interesting to note the number of new cases from Hungary, where activists say far-right-wing political groups that target Roma are gaining power, plunged from 4,427 in 2011.

Syria, among the
world’s most troubled war zones, produced 336 refugees in Canada last year, up
from 176 in 2011.

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

03/18/2013

Pakistan’s deadliest metropolis is mourning yet another victim – a local hero.

Aid
worker Parveen Rehman was shot and killed last Wednesday by four gunmen while driving near
Karachi’s western Orangi slum.

Rehman,
56, was the head of the Orangi Pilot Project, a widely praised charity that helped
locals rise out of poverty by helping communities establish and maintain their
own sanitation, health, housing and micro-finance systems.

Rehman
had been documenting land use, which the BBC reports, may have angered some of
Karachi’s crime syndicates.

“I
knew her for the last 40 years – she had no enemy,” Tahira Sadia, a teacher of
the Karachi University, told The Express Tribune newspaper. “Parveen was so
simple, straightforward and dedicated to her work. She was full of life.”

According
to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Rehman had documented how 1,500 local villages
had been merged into Karachi over the past 15 years. Criminals had grabbed much
of that land and earned billions of Pakistani rupees from land sales.

Pakistan
is a dangerous country in which to speak out, both for journalists and for
activists alike. In October, the Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai after she
refused to accept the group’s restrictions on girls’ education.

Following
her murder, each of Karachi’s main political parties called Rehman a hero. But
a year ago, Rehman during an interview with local journalist Fahad Desmukh criticized all of the local political
leaders, condemning them for protecting the land-grabbing criminals.

She recalled at the time, how a group of criminals had confronted her and
her colleagues.

“We
said, ‘all that you can do is kill us. What else can you do? We’re not afraid
of you.”

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

03/11/2013

A
demonstrator burns a cross during a protest in the Badami Bagh area of
Lahore March 9. An enraged mob torched dozens of houses located in
a Christian-dominated neighbourhood of Lahore on Saturday, local media
reported. (Adrees Hassain/Reuters)

A barbed exchange over a haircut turned into accusations
of blasphemy and the torching of a neighbourhood.

Pakistan is once more reeling in the wake of sectarian
violence after more than 125 homes in Lahore were burned by a mob of more than
3,000 people on Saturday.

The crowd was responding to rumours that a local Christian
man named Sawan Masih had made derogatory comments about the Prophet Muhammad.
Masih, a 26-year-old sanitation worker, told police after his arrest on
blasphemy charges that a local barber had spread the false rumours after
refusing to cut his hair.

A church and several shops were also burned over the weekend
by the mob, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports.

The area of Lahore targeted by the mob is made up largely of
Christian families. Most of them had left the area because police
warned them about the possible attack.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf have ordered an immediate inquiry into the attacks.

The Express Tribune newspaper reports
21 suspects have been jailed for their alleged involvement in the attack.

It’s understandable if locals don’t expect
to receive justice for their burned homes. Pakistan’s policing has long been
criticized for its inefficiency. In 2011, I investigated Pakistan’s broken
justice system, where 98 per cent of those charged of a serious crime are acquitted,
for a Star investigation.

The Lahore mob’s rampage also rekindles
memories of the case of Asia Bibi.

Bibi, a Christian mother of five, is
jailed in Pakistan, condemned to death on the charge of blasphemy. When
moderate Punjab governor Salman Taseer sought to have her sentence quashed, he
was murdered by his own security guard.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was The Star's South Asia bureau chief from 2008 to 2011. He now covers humanitarian aid and international assistance. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

02/21/2013

Pakistani girls shield themselves from the rain under an
umbrella as they walk back to their homes carrying sacks of vegetables and
fruits that they collected from the ground of a wholesale market, on the
outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 21. (AP Photo/Muhammed
Muheisen)

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